Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Saturday, 12 May 2012
Friday, 2 December 2011
Why I Don't Hate Modern Classical Music
This article caught my attention the other day: http://blog.mises.org/15667/why-do-we-hate-modern-classical-music/
Which force drives a musician or a listener to go backwards? That is my horribly biased question that I would like to open with, I believe anyone who agrees with the ideas shared in the above article are a detrimental force, weighing against the progress of all art music. How can there be Post-Modern when half the world still refuses to accept dissonance as a legitimate form of expression? I wish to digress now. I believe there is one particular force that has seduced people from real musical thought. It seduces people from the moment they begin life, their parents idly leaving the television on in the front room as some sort of substitute for mental stimulation. Every time you see an advert or watch a car-crash of contemporary cinema, you are being subliminally reduced as a person. Your expectations of what music should be are being thrashed and formed by the very people who make money from the drivel. Now the children of the Noughties/Deccies even had/have channels dedicated to forcing sloppy half-baked POP down their throats, they even pretend to enjoy it. Though they are two different things, popular music and art music should relate, how else are the Great Unwashed supposed to get their fix of the new? I suppose that filthy electro bass-line you've been spaffing from your chops in loud recognition is your absolute definition of sublime, yet I fail to see how an aesthetic should only be objectively satisfactory. Where is the thought? Has the art of the novel process been lost in a sea of Ableton-installed MacBook Pros and M.D.M.A. fuelled noise-masturbation sessions? I do not mean to attack everyone who is lucky enough to fall into the above category of 'Immensely-Satisfied and Uneducated Producer', but I fear for those who slave for those three seconds of so-called bliss that are then arranged perpetually, unaltered throughout the three to five minute standard form. Look at the devolution of Drum and Bass! There seem to be four drum patterns circulating the scene these days, the artists have lost all desire to alter anything - I presume - in realisation of the drugged-up collective's ability to not care.
Now. How can 500+ years of artistic practice and instruction have taken us to the place we stand in now? Classical music has continued to evolve, and rapidly accelerated in its progress for the past 150 years.We have seen the likes of Debussy, Satie, Messiaen, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Schnittke, Schoenberg, Ligeti, Scelsi, but I suppose the easy thing to do is just decide that no-one will ever be as good as Mozart, ay? Can you name a composer who isn't dead and hasn't been listed on the credits of a film you watched in the past ten years? This is another interesting thing, Robert Blumen states in his article that films such as 'Lord of the Rings' have brilliant tunes that anyone can hum and whistle along to. Why do you think that is? Do you think every composer lusts after a score that anyone can idly appreciate? Or do you think that maybe the warhorse in this case is the film itself, the director/producer perhaps requiring a very safe score that is in no danger of turning people off from the er...brilliant screen-writing, the er...blinding quality of the subject matter؟ Okay the idea is absolutely ridiculous, I am sorry. The truth is, good music shouldn't be for anyone, films are marketed and carefully produced to appeal to as many people as possible, so how can contemporary film-music composition be as flexible as concert composition? Also, explain to me Bernard Herrmann's success. Hitchcock knew the value of a good chunk of dissonance as much as the consonance, I assume, or he wouldn't have allowed the majority of the music that was composed for Psycho or Vertigo. Harmonious and diatonic passages are brilliant for conveying happiness, and more recently have been used to put across irony to those who will pay attention. So how do we convey feelings of dread? Hatred? Bitter-sweet? Disgust? Surprise? Walk round central-London for once, and tell me what score would be most appropriate. It's certainly not a Purcell keyboard work, maybe it's a nice slice of Penderecki? Krzysztof knew the score.
I am confident that the world is full of open-minded people, I am studying Music Composition at Middlesex university and have seen plenty of evidence for the absolute success of Modern composers. The best example would be Peter Fribbins' Piano Concerto that me and many of his students heard at Wigmore Hall in April this year. Alongside the piece we witnessed the blinding thunder of Shostakovich's Piano Concerto #1. Why was this piece programmed? If you were to pay any attention to the above article, you would be encouraged to think that no-one would have stuck around to hear the new work if there had not been an element of the past rammed in there as some sort of selling-point. But, no, there is another side to this style of programming. The concept works two audiences, and the reason I found that this 'warhorse' or 'chestnut' had to be programmed was out of absolute respect for the composer, and realisation that people love to hear continuity in performances, and a reference point - a masterpiece that perhaps the composer is pointing you towards. Now to people like Robert Blumen, the obvious answer would be that Fribbins' work just could not have carried itself. Well, why was the hall packed full of people wishing to see this new work? Why was every conversation of the night about this composition? Why was the applause greater than that following the other four pieces of the night? Though this is not true of all contemporary programming, I have seen at Kings Place a Schubert trio placed alongside the Messiaen quartet and I found myself relatively unsatisfied with the new having been interjected in such a fashion. But as I said, this programming works two audiences, if you don't understand why two pieces have been placed together then you should just accept that the eclecticism was not to your taste on that particular night. Maybe you should drink more in the interval, just don't attack the new! Please, do not attack the new! Question it, but do not deem it a conspiratorial-esque failure like Blumen has.
Fuck humming and whistling and all of the stereotypes we are endlessly battling against. Give me this for as long as I can adore it:
...then give me something else, just don't give me nothing to feel.
Which force drives a musician or a listener to go backwards? That is my horribly biased question that I would like to open with, I believe anyone who agrees with the ideas shared in the above article are a detrimental force, weighing against the progress of all art music. How can there be Post-Modern when half the world still refuses to accept dissonance as a legitimate form of expression? I wish to digress now. I believe there is one particular force that has seduced people from real musical thought. It seduces people from the moment they begin life, their parents idly leaving the television on in the front room as some sort of substitute for mental stimulation. Every time you see an advert or watch a car-crash of contemporary cinema, you are being subliminally reduced as a person. Your expectations of what music should be are being thrashed and formed by the very people who make money from the drivel. Now the children of the Noughties/Deccies even had/have channels dedicated to forcing sloppy half-baked POP down their throats, they even pretend to enjoy it. Though they are two different things, popular music and art music should relate, how else are the Great Unwashed supposed to get their fix of the new? I suppose that filthy electro bass-line you've been spaffing from your chops in loud recognition is your absolute definition of sublime, yet I fail to see how an aesthetic should only be objectively satisfactory. Where is the thought? Has the art of the novel process been lost in a sea of Ableton-installed MacBook Pros and M.D.M.A. fuelled noise-masturbation sessions? I do not mean to attack everyone who is lucky enough to fall into the above category of 'Immensely-Satisfied and Uneducated Producer', but I fear for those who slave for those three seconds of so-called bliss that are then arranged perpetually, unaltered throughout the three to five minute standard form. Look at the devolution of Drum and Bass! There seem to be four drum patterns circulating the scene these days, the artists have lost all desire to alter anything - I presume - in realisation of the drugged-up collective's ability to not care.
Now. How can 500+ years of artistic practice and instruction have taken us to the place we stand in now? Classical music has continued to evolve, and rapidly accelerated in its progress for the past 150 years.We have seen the likes of Debussy, Satie, Messiaen, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Schnittke, Schoenberg, Ligeti, Scelsi, but I suppose the easy thing to do is just decide that no-one will ever be as good as Mozart, ay? Can you name a composer who isn't dead and hasn't been listed on the credits of a film you watched in the past ten years? This is another interesting thing, Robert Blumen states in his article that films such as 'Lord of the Rings' have brilliant tunes that anyone can hum and whistle along to. Why do you think that is? Do you think every composer lusts after a score that anyone can idly appreciate? Or do you think that maybe the warhorse in this case is the film itself, the director/producer perhaps requiring a very safe score that is in no danger of turning people off from the er...brilliant screen-writing, the er...blinding quality of the subject matter؟ Okay the idea is absolutely ridiculous, I am sorry. The truth is, good music shouldn't be for anyone, films are marketed and carefully produced to appeal to as many people as possible, so how can contemporary film-music composition be as flexible as concert composition? Also, explain to me Bernard Herrmann's success. Hitchcock knew the value of a good chunk of dissonance as much as the consonance, I assume, or he wouldn't have allowed the majority of the music that was composed for Psycho or Vertigo. Harmonious and diatonic passages are brilliant for conveying happiness, and more recently have been used to put across irony to those who will pay attention. So how do we convey feelings of dread? Hatred? Bitter-sweet? Disgust? Surprise? Walk round central-London for once, and tell me what score would be most appropriate. It's certainly not a Purcell keyboard work, maybe it's a nice slice of Penderecki? Krzysztof knew the score.
I am confident that the world is full of open-minded people, I am studying Music Composition at Middlesex university and have seen plenty of evidence for the absolute success of Modern composers. The best example would be Peter Fribbins' Piano Concerto that me and many of his students heard at Wigmore Hall in April this year. Alongside the piece we witnessed the blinding thunder of Shostakovich's Piano Concerto #1. Why was this piece programmed? If you were to pay any attention to the above article, you would be encouraged to think that no-one would have stuck around to hear the new work if there had not been an element of the past rammed in there as some sort of selling-point. But, no, there is another side to this style of programming. The concept works two audiences, and the reason I found that this 'warhorse' or 'chestnut' had to be programmed was out of absolute respect for the composer, and realisation that people love to hear continuity in performances, and a reference point - a masterpiece that perhaps the composer is pointing you towards. Now to people like Robert Blumen, the obvious answer would be that Fribbins' work just could not have carried itself. Well, why was the hall packed full of people wishing to see this new work? Why was every conversation of the night about this composition? Why was the applause greater than that following the other four pieces of the night? Though this is not true of all contemporary programming, I have seen at Kings Place a Schubert trio placed alongside the Messiaen quartet and I found myself relatively unsatisfied with the new having been interjected in such a fashion. But as I said, this programming works two audiences, if you don't understand why two pieces have been placed together then you should just accept that the eclecticism was not to your taste on that particular night. Maybe you should drink more in the interval, just don't attack the new! Please, do not attack the new! Question it, but do not deem it a conspiratorial-esque failure like Blumen has.
Fuck humming and whistling and all of the stereotypes we are endlessly battling against. Give me this for as long as I can adore it:
...then give me something else, just don't give me nothing to feel.
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